Photos: Algeria expels 13,000 migrants to fend for themselves in the Sahara

Jun 26, 2018 14:29 IST

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A truck carrying migrants drives through the Saharan Tenere in Niger. Once a well-worn roadway for tourists, the highway’s 4,500 kms are a favoured path for migrants heading north. Here in the desert, Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, stranding them without food or water and forcing them to walk, under temperatures of up to 48 degrees Celsius. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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Migrants climb into a truck heading north into Algeria at the Assamaka border post. The majority head towards Niger, where the lucky ones limp across a desolate 15kms no man’s land to Assamaka, less a town than a collection of unsteady buildings sinking into drifts of sand. Others, disoriented and dehydrated, wander for days before a UN rescue squad can find them. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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“Women were lying dead, other people got missing in the desert because they didn’t know the way,” said Janet Kamara, who was expelled in May and was pregnant at the time. Her body still aches from the dead baby she gave birth to during the trek. Now in Arlit, Niger, she is reeling from the time she spent in what she calls “the wilderness,” sleeping in the sand. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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Algerian gendarmes load migrants onto trucks to drop them off at the Niger border. Algeria’s mass expulsions have picked up since October 2017, as the EU renewed pressure on North African countries to head off migrants going to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea or the barrier fences with Spain. Some sub-Saharan migrants are fleeing violence and others seek a living. (Ju Dennis / AP)

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A bullet-ridden barrel indicates the direction of Arlit in Niger’s Tenere. An EU spokesperson said they were aware of what Algeria was doing, but that “sovereign countries” can expel migrants as long as they comply with international law. Unlike Niger, Algeria takes none of the EU money intended to help with the migration crisis, although it did receive $111.3 million in aid from Europe between 2014 and 2017. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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With no figures for the expulsions, the number of people crossing on foot to Niger has been rising steadily since the International Organization for Migration (IOM) started counting in May 2017, when 135 people were dropped at the crossing, to as high as 2,888 in April 2018. In all, according to the IOM, a total of 11,276 men, women and children survived the march. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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The migrants described being rounded up hundreds at a time, crammed into open trucks headed southward for six to eight hours to Point Zero, then dropped in the desert and pointed in the direction of Niger. In early June, 217 people were dropped well before reaching Point Zero, 30 kms from the nearest source of water, according to IOM. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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A smuggler counts money at the Assamaka border post. Aliou Kande, 18, from Senegal said nearly a dozen people simply gave up, collapsing in the sand. Kande said the Algerian police stole everything he had earned when he was first detained --40,000 dinars (Rs. 23,000 approx.) and a cellphone. “They tossed us into the desert, without our telephones, without money,” he said, still livid at the memory. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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The frame of an abandoned Peugeot 404 rests in Niger’s Tenere. Thousands of other Nigerien migrants are expelled directly home because of a 2015 agreement between Niger and Algeria to deal with Nigeriens living illegally in Algeria. The number of migrants sent home in convoys — nearly all of them Nigerien — has also shot up, to at least 14,446 since August 2017, compared with 9,290 for all of 2016. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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Isaac Solomon, 40, from Nigeria, waits for medical attention at the IOM transit center in Arlit. Algeria has denied criticism from the IOM and other organizations that it is committing human rights abuses by abandoning migrants in the desert, calling the allegations a “malicious campaign” intended to inflame neighbouring countries. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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A lone camel walks in Niger’s Tenere desert. The IOM has estimated that for every migrant known to have died crossing the Mediterranean, as many as two are lost in the desert — potentially upwards of 30,000 people since 2014. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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A migrant who was expelled from Algeria at the Arlit transit center with scars on his hands and arms was so traumatized that he never spoke and didn’t leave. The other migrants assumed he had endured the unspeakable in Algeria, a place where many said they had been robbed and beaten by authorities. (Jerome Delay / AP)

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A dead goat lies outside the Assamaka border post. In Assamaka, the migrants settle behind the border post until the IOM can get enough buses to fetch them. The IOM offers them a choice: Register to return eventually to their home countries or fend for themselves at the border. In Agadez, the IOM camps are also filling up, with involved parties growing increasingly impatient with their fate. (Jerome Delay / AP)

about the gallery

In the past 14 months, Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people to a swift killer which leaves little evidence behind --the Sahara Desert. Migrants including pregnant women and children are expelled without food or water and forced to walk under temperatures as high as 48 degrees Celsius. The International Organization for Migration has estimated that for every migrant known to have died crossing the Mediterranean, as many as two are lost in the desert. But Algeria denies criticism that it is committing human rights abuses by abandoning migrants in the desert, and has called the allegations a "malicious campaign".